1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a refrigerator, and more particularly, to an apparatus for controlling cool air in a focused manner to cool a section which is weakly cooled or stores new loads.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a refrigerator is used for keeping foods cold or maintaining a uniform temperature in cold storage.
The refrigerator is an apparatus which deprives heat from the surroundings for cooling, through a refrigerating cycle composed of air compressing, air condensing and evaporating steps in order to freeze or refrigerate foods which tend to spoil in warm environments and products such as fish which require freshness.
Due to the convenient feature that the refrigerator can store foods, fish, fruits, drinks and the like as well as freeze the same into edible ices at any time based upon the above principle, the refrigerator has become an essential electric appliance in the modem society.
FIG. 1 is a perspective view illustrating the structure of a typical refrigerator. Referring to FIG. 1, the refrigerator is divided into a freezing chamber 24 and a refrigerating chamber 26 by an interior dividing wall 18 of a housing 14. At least one door (not shown) is mounted to the front of the housing in order to separate the freezing and refrigerating chambers 24 and 26 from the external air.
In the meantime, the refrigerator comprises instruments for the refrigerating cycle which perform the compressing, condensing and evaporating steps to generate cool air necessary for cooling the freezing and refrigerating chambers 24 and 26. Further, the refrigerator is provided at an upper rear section thereof with a blowing chamber 10 which has an air blowing fan 12 for forcibly blowing the cool air generated in the refrigerating cycle into the freezing and refrigerating chambers 24 and 26.
Further, a plurality of cool air forward-discharge ports 20a for discharging the cool air forward are formed in certain positions with respect to the compartment dividing wall 18 between the freezing and refrigerating chambers 24 and 26 which mutually communicate with the blowing chamber 10.
Further, a cool air suction port 22 may be provided in a certain position for sucking in the surrounding air.
In the refrigerator illustrated and discussed as above, a compressor compresses a gaseous coolant with low temperature and pressure into a high temperature and pressure state. The compressed gaseous coolant with high temperature and pressure is cooled and condensed into a liquid state with high pressure while passing through a condenser. The liquid coolant with high pressure has its temperature and pressure lowered while passing through a capillary tube (not shown). Then, in an evaporator, the liquid coolant is transformed into a gaseous state with low temperature and pressure while absorbing heat from the surroundings so as to cool the air in the surroundings. In sequence, the air cooled through the evaporator is circulated through the freezing chamber 24 and then the refrigerating chamber 26 due to the operation of the blowing fan 12 so as to lower the internal temperature of the freezing and refrigerating chambers.
As described above, the refrigerator is provided with a cool air distributing system for uniformly distributing the cool air generated around the evaporator to the storage spaces of the freezing and refrigerating chambers. Of course, the cool air distributing system is variously configured according to the kind of the refrigerator.
Describing the cool air distributing system in reference to FIGS. 1 and 2, the refrigerating chamber 26 is provided in the upper end with a damper 20 which communicates with the blowing chamber 10.
At one side of the damper 20 are provided the cool air forward-discharge ports 20a for discharging the cool air forwardly and cool air downward-discharge ports 20b for discharging the cool air downwardly.
Therefore, in the cool air distributing system configured as above, the cool air generated around the evaporator and transferred into the blowing chamber 10 is distributed to the freezing chamber 24 and the damper 20 with the blowing fan 12 provided in the blowing chamber 10.
In this case, the cool air introduced into the freezing chamber 24 circulates through the inside of the freezing chamber before moving into the evaporator again via the cool air suction port 22 at the bottom of the freezing chamber. Then, the cool air introduced into the damper 20 is discharged into the refrigerating chamber 26 via the cool air forward-discharge ports 20a at the side.
The cool air discharged into an upper section of the refrigerating chamber via the cool air forward-discharge ports 20a is distributed to storage spaces defined by storage shelves 16 while flowing downward via spaces between a door 15 and the storage shelves 16. Then, the cool air is finally introduced into the cool air suction port 22 connected to the evaporator.
However, according to the related art as set forth above, the cool air discharged from the upper damper is not properly transferred into middle and lower sections of the refrigerating chamber far from the damper so that a refrigerating operation is not effectively carried out thereby resulting in a problem that the refrigerating chamber has a non-uniform temperature distribution.
Since the cool air is not sufficiently transferred around the door 14 is spaced from the upper damper, foods stored in a door basket are not properly cooled as a problem.
In the meantime, the conventional refrigerator configured as above discharges or blocks the cool air into/from the refrigerating chamber 26 by detecting the weight of the shelves 16 in the refrigerating chamber 26 when a new cooling load (e.g. warm food) is introduced or by detecting the weight of the refrigerating chamber 26 itself. Alternatively, the refrigerator discharges or blocks the cool air into/from the entire refrigerating chamber 26 according to its temperature fluctuation by detecting and judging the temperature of the refrigerating chamber 26 itself with a temperature sensor (not shown) mounted on a specific region of the refrigerating chamber 26.
However, according to this cool air controlling method, when the surrounding temperature and weight of the refrigerating chamber are elevated due to the new cooling load as above, the cool air is discharged into the entire refrigerating chamber for a certain time period to lower the elevated surrounding temperature of the entire refrigerator thereby disadvantageously enlarging the amount of power consumption of the refrigerator.
Further, the controlling method of cooling the entire refrigerating chamber as above by cooling the newly stored load while at the same time lowering the temperature of the entire refrigerating chamber, has the disadvantage of decreasing the cooling speed of the new load and the cooling ability of the refrigerator and by requiring a large amount of cooling air.